Jim Cummins - Mid West Correspondent

March 27, 2012

I was watching Charlie Rose one night years ago when Bill Styron called in and said he didn't "get" David Letterman. Styron said, "Yes, he's mildly ironic, but ..." Letterman is from Indianapolis, which is one of the towns I'm from. I think I "get" Letterman pretty well, but that's another story. I thought of this quote as I was prowling around the recent AWP conference in Chicago. Are we poets too mildly ironic? Is the Midwest too mildly ironic, and poets are chameleons, therefore become too mildly ironic when they visit? Mulling this over as I rode the elevators, I thought maybe it would be interesting to post another poet's response to a midwestern conference many many years ago, as recorded by Richard Howard in his great book on American poetry, Alone With America:

"Not long ago, at one of our recurrent poetry conferences which suggest with all the force of an Euclidean proof--just look at those celluloid identification badges, typed with each poet's name and (of course) his university--that we are, even in our most notoriously dissident callings, a nation not of joiners merely, but of members; at one of those chapter meetings, then, in the endless volume of our self-concern, I listened to an address by a celebrated poet, an elderly professor it was, who had rised to the Collected Poems level and who, before arriving at our conference somewhere in the midwest, had reached for the wrong speech among (I imagine) several on his desk, thereupon regaling his fellows with a description of the bare-breasted beauties of Nigeria intended surely for the National Geographic Society. A married man, the father of daughters, it came as rather a shock to hear him extol the rare privilege of moving among a race of women proudly nude, and precisely then (though his own performance was not scheduled until much later in the program) Allen Ginsberg ... performed! He got up from the ring of chairs where the ulterior speakers were waiting for their turns to read their own poems, to speak their own thoughts, to do their own thing, and advancing solemnly--bearded, intent, unmistakeable--toward the old eulogist of noble savagery, he stepped up onto the dais and without a word, without a smile, without a single deprecating gesture, Allen Ginsberg took off all his clothes."

March 22, 2012

Two men walk through the boardroom. Each one carries a spear; each wears a mask. Each man is afraid of his own death, but is no less willing to strike, to rend, kill. Each mask is a grotesque mirror of rage, meant to inspire mortal fear; each man hopes the other will be made too afraid to fight when he finally confronts him and his hideous mask. Each man had a father who told him his mask represents his true nature within. Each man had a mother who told him it represents what he wants other men to believe about his true nature within. As young men, each came to accept his father’s version of what his mask means, so had faith in his mask for many years. But as he gets older and closer to death, each wonders if his mother’s explanation might not be the true one, after all. Either his mask has reflected his real self all along, or he has turned into his mask. It becomes increasingly important to know whether his mother’s story or his father’s is the one he can believe. Neither man betrays doubt as he glares through the haze his cigarette makes; doubt gives other men a license to strike. Yet it is only doubt, not certainty, that allows him to hold the two versions together in his mind, in some balance. Two men walk into the boardroom; they carry spears, wear fearsome masks. Each man is afraid, but for all his confusion, is no less willing to strike, to rend, kill; and he thinks his father, finally, is right. Yet when his face distorts beneath its mask, and, cursing the other, he hurls his spear, each man remembers the words of his mother.

From Still Some Cake by Jim Cummins (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2012)

March 21, 2012

Along with approximately 10,999 other registrants, I attended the recent AWP Conference in Chicago earlier this month. I also attended the first Woodstock, in August, 1969. They were similar events, minus the rock bands and the loudspeaker announcements about bad acid. On the other hand, Chicago had poetry in the elevators; a tape loop of poets reading their own poems played continuously in the elevators throughout the conference. This was obviously a social-networking device on the Hilton's part to help people break the ice, in lieu of mud, good vibes, and the aforementioned bad acid. As I understand it, a few years ago the Poetry Foundation made a number of tape loops of poets collaborating with visual artists; the one that played in the elevators at this year's AWP was also available in its entirety on the in-house channel 44, on our room TVs. I remember poems by Mark Strand, Todd Boss, our own DL, a number of others. I thought the tape loop was wonderful, sort of the equivalent of the rock groups at Woodstock--the background sounds of human contact, interaction. In the morning I'd get on an elevator crammed with poets, and Mark Strand would say, "I don't want to be an American poet anymore," or something like that. "The black flies are after me." People would shift from foot to foot, except there was no room, so we'd all bump shoulders and hips, and get to know each other. At 2 or 3 in the morning, I'd stumble into an empty elevator, and there would be Mark and those flies again, or somebody telling me about how un-hip she was in New York City. I loved those poems, those voices. Most other people didn't; instead of being grateful for the ice-breaking gift, they complained about how un-hip the whole process was. Poems in the elevators! How, I don't know, pathetic! I began to ride the elevators instead of going to the panel presentations, just so I could hear how people responded to the tape loop. I began to volunteer information about the poems, which I'd listened to about a hundred times each by then. I told them about Channel 44. I began to carry a clipboard on which I could note down personal information, such as whether they were poets, or fiction writers, non-fictioners or children's book people, that sort of thing. Several people told me this made them a little uneasy. Occasionally, I'd follow them out of the elevator to their rooms; sometimes the conversations got a little heated. "I'm a poet, too!" I'd say, as the door would close in my face. "Those are my brethren!" I began to pick out women in the lobby, follow them into the elevators. I wanted to see what they thought about the poems. One morning there was a knock on my door. I opened it and two beefy men in suits came in; they very politely asked me to stop following women into the elevators. I assured them I would, but I saw this was a rare opportunity, too. I asked them what they thought of the poems being broadcast in the elevators; they said they didn't have an opinion. By Saturday night, I was exhausted. Downstairs was a madhouse, as usual: eleven thousand people milling around with ID badges on lanyards that twisted them around so you couldn't see the names. I found a place at the bar next to a very attractive young woman; to break the ice, I said, "So what do you think of those poems?" "Excuse me?" she said. I said, "You know, the poems--in the elevators." My voice might have had a bit of an edge. She said, "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean." I asked her straight out, "Are you a fiction writer?" "I work for Delta Airlines." "Oh--you a stewardess?" "A 'flight attendant'?" she asked. "No, I'm a pilot." She picked her purse up from the bar and began to slide off her stool. "Hey," I said, "you haven't finished your drink!" There was almost a full glass of wine left. "I have an appointment," she said, "you can have it." "I was at Woodstock," I called after her, "the real one!" She didn't turn around. I looked at her wine; there was a lipstick smudge on the rim. What the heck, I thought, and turned the glass around to the clean side and drank it down. Next day I flew back to Cincinnati. I love the AWP conferences, but it was good to get home.

February 22, 2012

James Cummins’ Still Some Cake is filled with brilliant poems—“This Night of All Nights,” “My Father’s Hair,” “The Greatest Generation,” “The War of All Against All,” and “Moses”—to name just some of the longer ones—written in an effortless, fluent style that presents surprises in almost every line. But the book transcends its individual poems, as its recurring obsessions—the burdens of the proximity of those closest to us, including ourselves—surface and resurface in the context of the family romance, history and war, the solitary, violent imagination, the narrative of the Bible—to create a fugue-like whole, by turns harrowing and exhilarating. Still Some Cake is one of the most powerful books in recent memory. —John Koethe

Better than any American poet of his generation, Cummins, in a voice fierce, simple, and matter of fact, writes nakedly of men and violence, men and their fathers, men and their friends, men and the women and children they love. His command of formalism is still as impressive as it is unobtrusive, and with it he renders the self—that’s all of us—and our human longing to speak our truth nakedly and to be whole. I read this book, and am astonished and graced. —Marilyn Krysl

February 09, 2012

Kevin Young, this year's Best American Poetry guest editor, will be criss-crossing the country over the next few months. If you're lucky, he's planning to stop in your town. You can find his full schedule here. In addition to being an award winning poet, non-fiction writer, and anthologist, Kevin curates the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University and is the curator of literary collections. His exhibit, Shadows of the Sun: The Crosbys, the Black Sun Press & the Lost Generation is up through March 16 and should not be missed. David and Kevin talked about this historic exhibit last fall. You can listen here.

T. P. Winch writes to tell us about a wonderful project undertaken by the Crozet Library, a branch of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Three years ago, the library started the Poem in Your Pocket Day program as part of National Poetry Month. You can watch a video about last year's program here.

We're over the moon with excitement about Jim Cummins new book Still Some Cake. We've posted some of Jim's great poems (along with his prose) here. We'll be posting more over the next few weeks but, in the meantime, get your order in by clicking on the cover image below. Congratulations Jim!

November 22, 2011

I sat in Miss Reynolds’s biology class the day we all remember what we were doing. I seem to recollect dissecting a fetal pig; but perhaps, like Vardaman, I only conflated physical and metaphysical horror in one obliterating flash. More likely, recalling myself as student and young man, I sat there quietly, watching the others poke, carve, discover. But at 1:30, when the intercom coughed without preamble, and we listened in growing fear to what resembled a phone conversation broken into by mistake (ellipses of questioning; sobs; once, a loud shout) turn slowly into the focused statement that went through each of us like a bullet—that he had, in fact, been murdered—we all sat up and still then, the radiant pigs forgotten forever.

2

Who can explain the oracular impulse? That day, they told us to “vacate the premises”; no shoulder to cry on in those spare times; no counsel. The Phys Ed teachers and the coaches, who would pull boys from the hallway scrum, and slam their backs against the walls to make a point, stood there sullen, sour, as we filed past, silent, not even allowed to use the phones—but then, who would we have called? There was a strip mall off the high school lot; we’d meet there at the bakery before class, the rich kids in a restaurant nearby. That day we wandered aimlessly along the storefronts; what I remember most is our stunned silence. In a television store I saw a woman clerk who looked the way I felt. I blurted out, “We’ll never get past this”— I could feel the fear distort my voice, as if I knew. She stared at me, as if I knew.

3

Miss Reynolds had good bones, as the connoisseurs of beauty say, but wore so much make-up she seemed a mannequin or doll. Or Lady Elaine Fairchilde, on Fred Rogers’ TV show, or Punch’s wife, Judy— an alabaster reach of flesh in which soft eyes seemed trapped. I’ve often wondered since if she were the first transsexual I’d known, her perfect over-lipsticked lips a truth some lonely man pined for in his own mirror. I was fifteen: desire needed no abyss. Even wrinkled old Mrs. Benedict— even hoary old Mrs. B.—would writhe beneath me in my bed at night, while I sucked her ancient leathery nipples, and groaned aloud. I wasn’t rich or president; the Beatles had yet to play on Ed Sullivan; RFK was still alive, like me. And everywhere I looked desire fused with death.

James Cummins's new book, Still Some Cake, will be out in January, 2012 (Carnegie Mellon).

August 07, 2011

On May 30, 2008, in this space, Dan Nester posted about an afternoon he and Jonah Winter spent sending up the titles that adorn poetry books. The titles that occurred to them "all seemed so aggressively portentous, imbued with such fawning obsequiousness," Nester wrote. "To exorcise ourselves of the real-life titles we were mentioning, titles that shall not be mentioned here, we played a word association game wherein either Jonah or myself would think of the second word of a two-word poetry book title, which would after after whatever the other participant named as the first." The "after after" in that sentence is hard to parse, perhaps deliberately, but the list of titles that follows clarifies the idea and gives us a window into the lads' minds that day: "Technical Vulva," "Variegated Cock," "Airport Beaver," "Stiff Flowering," "Tremulous Beaver."

The best of the list formed a category of their own: "good bad titles." Such was the thought of Corey Zeller, who approached a bunch of other poets to see whether they would produce self-parodying titles on order. Zeller's objective: "to write a book of serious prose poems" borrowing the deliberately bad titles. That She Could Remember Something Other Than _________, a Nester / Winter nominee, is the working title for Zeller's collection.

Among those who have responded to the summons thus far are Dean Young ("Tears of My Shadow"), Major Jackson ("The Shoeshine Chronicles"), Nin Andrews ("Beta Male Ballads"), Kim Addonizio "What Color is Your Vagina," "What Do Assholes Want?" "My Despair"), Arielle Greenberg ("Four Thousand Short Notes on Heidegger") as well as Joe Wenderoth, Dana Levin, Tim Seibles, Matthew Zapruder, and Joyelle McSweeney. A few conclusions can be drawn. Heidegger, who figures in several titles, handily beats out Descartes as the bad philosopher of choice. Sex, body parts, and bodily function retain their ancient popularity, with Dean Young's "My Mother's Thong" rivaling Dorothy Lasky's "Sitting by Your Mom's Bush in Broad Sunlight" but topped in tastelessness by the simplicity of Peter Markus's "On the Rag."

Here are some of the titles Jim Cummins has punfully proposed:

NOSTROMOSEXUALTHE INTERPRETATION OF JEANSPRIMO LEVI'STHE LIVES OF A CELLOALL THE PRESIDENT'S PERSONS

Jim also suggests some plausible pseudonyms, chosen from the imaginary "tablet of contents" that he has been tinkering with for years. W S Merlot pours well. With Kenneth Joch you wonders how to pronounce the surname: Jock? Joke? Josh?

Not one to shirk a challenge, I came up with titles for books, not necessaerily poetry books, that might appear in a publisher's catalog:

-- USEFUL CANADIAN REVENUE-SHARING PLANS

-- DO-IT-YOURSELF DENTISTRY, Volume 1

-- DEAD MONEY: PFIZER, CISCO, AND OTHER VALUE TRAPS

-- THE SINUS HANDBOOK

-- SHAKESPEARE'S HAPPIEST COUPLE: MAC AND LADY MACBETH

The last on this list was prompted by the proposition that the Macbeths may be Shakespeare's happiest husband and wife -- in the tragedies at least.

Speaking of Shakespeare, I thought of another such title during a phone conversation with John Ashbery. We were discussing a decision he had made and I called it shrewd. He couldn't hear what I said and asked me to repeat the adjective. Shrewd, I said, "as in 'The Taming of the Shrewd'."

Oh, the photo illustrating this post is -- Hmmm. Why don't I invite guesses from the blogosphere? -- DL

March 22, 2011

Last week in London I met with Mark Ford and concurred enthusiastically when he said that a cable TV station dedicated to the New York School would be a good idea. Jenny Quilter would serve as anchor at NYS headquarters and would moderate "Breakfast with James Schuyler" among other shows.

Some programs immediately come to mind as ideal for their time slots. "Lunch Walk" with Frank O'Hara (theme music from Poulenc's "Perpetual Motion"), "Happy Hour" with John Ashbery (theme music from Elliott Carter), and the aforementioned "Breakfast with James Schuyler" with Guests such as Barbara brought to you by Tiptree Gooseberry Preserve. Lewis Saul will compose music specially for the opening and closing credits weaving in fragments from JS's poem "June 30, 1974." Also, we plan to air "Gardening with Jimmy," at 3:30, hosted by Susan Baran and Marc Cohen with visits by C. North, E. Myles, et al, "Morning Prayer" with Anne Porter daily at 7 in lush interiors depicted by her husband, and "Fairfield's Opinions," Sundays at 11 AM, in which, against a backdrop of incredible seascapes, the painter airs his views on subjects ranging from cancer cures to risk-averse investment strategies. Maureen Owen will host "Telephone," with each show devoted to a phone call of note. Bonus feature: the poets' answering machine announcements and selected messages.

The "Harry Mathews Wine Hour," "Looking at Lookiing" with Jane Freilicher, and "Looking at the Dance with Edwin Denby" (hosted by Anne Waldman) are in the works. I have not yet consulted with Ron Padgett to determine whether he will produce and star in "The Tennis Court Coach" in the pilot of which Ron explicates Ashbery's The Tennis Court Oath in relation to the historical events preceding the actual tennis court oath in Paris in 1789.

For "Koch and his Circle," Kenneth Koch and friends will collaborate on poems and act in Koch's plays and skits such as "Keats and His Circle" set in Hampstead Heath in 1819. Harvard and Columbia students will receive course credit for regular viewing.

Larry Rivers and the Climax Band will play sets on weekend evenings at 9:30, 11, and 1 AM. We have been encouraging David Shapiro to bring his violin, Charles North his clarinet, and Larry Fagin his expertise on great girl singers of the Big Band Era, such as Louanne Hogan.

Vincent Katz will host a weekly "Studio Visit" featuring such painters, artists, and collage makers as Trevor Winkfield, Joe Brainard, Alex Katz, Joan Mitchell, the late Nell Blaine, the late George Schneeman, Jim Dine, Darragh Park. New work will be displayed by Star Black, David Shapiro, Susan Wheeler, Marjorie Welish, many others.

James Cummins will executive-produce and serve as chief writer on a brand new series of "PerryMason" courtroom dramas where everyone speaks only in sestinas.

Special consultant: Paul Violi (see his poem "Triptych"). Bureau chiefs: John Tranter in Sydney, Pyotr Sommer in Warsaw, Amy Gerstler in Los Angeles, David Trinidad in Chicago, Alice Notley in Paris, Terence Winch in DC, James Cummins in Cincinnati, Paul Hoover in San Francisco. Denise Duhamel wil report from Miami, Karin Roffman from West Point, Tony Towle from the taxi, and Nin Andrews from the AWP Conference. David Shapiro will be himself. These are just preliminary thoughts. More to come. This is as they say in French a "work in progress." (Like Finnegans Wake.) Suggestions welcome. -- DL

September 07, 2010

Two men walk through the boardroom.
Each one carries a spear; each wears a mask.
Each man is afraid of his own death,
but is no less willing to strike, to rend, kill.
Each mask is a grotesque mirror of rage,
meant to inspire mortal fear;
each man hopes the other will be made
too afraid to fight when he finally
confronts him and his hideous mask.
Each man had a father who told him
his mask represents his true nature within.
Each man had a mother who told him
it represents what he wants other men
to believe about his true nature within.
As young men, each came to accept
his father’s version of what his mask means,
so had faith in his mask for many years.
But as he gets older and closer to death,
each wonders if his mother’s explanation
might not be the true one, after all.
Either his mask has reflected his real self
all along, or he has turned into his mask.
It becomes increasingly important
to know whether his mother’s story
or his father’s is the one he can believe.
Neither man betrays doubt as he glares
through the haze his cigarette makes;
doubt gives other men a license to strike.
Yet it is only doubt, not certainty,
that allows him to hold the two versions
together in his mind, in some balance.
Two men walk into the boardroom;
they carry spears, wear fearsome masks.
Each man is afraid, but for all his confusion,
is no less willing to strike, to rend, kill;
and he thinks his father, finally, is right.
Yet when his face distorts beneath its mask,
and, cursing the other, he hurls his spear,
each man remembers the words of his mother.

December 28, 2009

Is it hot in here, or is it just me?
They both seem so much older now than I—
can this be so? Do women age like dogs,
or something out of Wilde? Seven years
for every one we live? He cuts her meat.

Good God, that inward stare! I loved her so.
The self-absorption’s thickened like her hide.
I knew all this before, of course. I knew.
And got out early like the pig I am.
She’s jowly, tense. Elderly. It’s nineteen years …

What was Elena saying as they left?
Arm in arm, as if I’d ceased to be?
They walked along the garden for an hour,
Elena kindly offering E. her laugh.
Two women, arm in arm, whose toes I’ve—

What? What’d I say? Blurted something out—
but what? It must have been unpleasant: clouds
are forming on the brow of Mt. Monadnock.
I’ve added to the burden of his days!
Good Christ, am I going through the change?

Why are they looking at me with such hate?
Why can’t I just remember what I said?
We’ve drunk too much; we always drink too much.
I hear Herself—she calls my name loudly,
a tone of bemusement hiding her rage:

“So are you going to pass him the gravy,
or must the three of us go over there,
and by God take the boat by force?” I see
Elena’s face, alarmed; I look at Gene,
his face savage, full of remorse; then down

at those gravy-less potatoes. I stare
again at E., at E.—are we all insane?
“Of course,” I mumble, “the gravy.” I look
about wildly—thank God, it’s near my plate!
Is there no window in this goddamn house?

September 11, 2009

I took a couple days off to check my humor levels. When one speaks of MFA World one must make sure one's humor levels are up. Most people, teachers or students, are pretty solemn about their position in MFA World; and the teachers especially don't like to have someone poke fun at their livelihoods, the source of their paychecks and ease, travel funds and professional develop-ment expenses.

I was musing the other day about what a poet's learning curve was like maybe fifty years ago, in the 60s; I remembered the notion (actually, I remembered Robert Mezey telling me about it) of the poet's education, his or her "Grand Tour," that was prevalent then. You lived in New York for a couple of years, soaking up the Village literary life especially, perhaps taking a master's at Columbia, as Larry Ferlinghetti and John Ashbery did, among others. Then you spent a couple of years in the heart of the country, in Iowa City, taking an MFA there from the Writers' Workshop. And then you completed your poetic education by spending another couple of years in Palo Alto and San Francisco, preferably on a Stegner fellowship, and studying with Yvor Winters (Thom Gunn famously did this). As a working class kid, I found this leisure impossible to conceive of personally, but it did seem like a wonderful idea. And not only were there fewer people vying for spots at these places, but there was also the sense (especially following WW II) that a writer existed prior to a writing program--that the writer came from somewhere else in society, already formed in a basic way, if needful of feedback and technical advice.

Nowadays, maybe the biggest change from the old days is linked to the exponential growth of writing programs: writers are produced by the system. They are born in undergrad creative writing classes taught by an older product of the system; they graduate with majors or minors in creative writing; they go immediately into graduate writing programs, then into jobs teaching creative writing; their writing lives are then lived in the maturity of networks, conferences, trips to friends' campuses for readings, management of their university resources in order to be able to invite the friends back to their own campuses, sabbaticals and leaves of absence funded by their universities, expenditure of travel and research funds, editing of journals and anthologies that include their friends within the system (and to show integrity, sometimes their enemies), service on panels and awards committees that give money and prizes to writers, almost all of whom reside inside the system, and service on search committees to hire other younger writers the system has produced.

In his excellent book, The Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880, David Myers quotes Don Justice, arguably the preeminent and most beloved teacher of poets, calling in 1984 the growth of writing programs a "pyramid scheme"--a Ponzi game, like Bernie Madoff's house of cards. Myers lists 25 programs started by Iowa grads; these include: Skidmore, Eastern Washington, Colorado State, Western Michigan, Arkansas, Oregon, Montana, Massachusetts, Bowling Green, Penn State, Alabama, University of Chicago, Vanderbilt, and others. I could add: Indiana, Arizona, Utah, and Florida, where Iowa grads either started the program or were instrumental at the beginning; and of course there's venerable old Stanford, whose program was started by Wallace Stegner (an Iowa native) after his sojourn in the Workshop in the early 1940s. (This last sentence is my own doing; any error in fact is mine, not Myers, though I think I'm in the ballpark.)

Myers also points out that the rise of writing programs parallels the availability of money. State legislatures were willing to fund these new programs (the growth period I'm talking about is mainly late-60s through early 80s). Why? Partly, I'm sure, because the country still supported higher education somewhat back then, but mostly because their customers--potential students--were willing to pay for such a course of study. So Iowa grads were seminal in the proliferation of writing programs, and they were motivated to do this because they wanted cushy jobs like the ones Marvin and Don had--believe me, I know, I was there: "cushy" was an oft-used adjective. To feed these positions--like Audrey, the plant in The Little Shop of Horrors--we need students, whom we grow, or "enable," within the system, from their birth at 18 or 19 through a graduate program, each one a ten- or fifteen-year harvesting. And what we're "teaching" them first and foremost is not to be writers, but to be academics (shudder)--bureaucratic careerists.

So you assume I think this is all terrible; not so. I'm just saying it's a system, and we're all gaming it--teachers, students, administrators, legislators. When we lose sight of that fact--for example, when we claim for ourselves the sanctity of positing literature as a higher calling--we depress the inclination to be aware of our manipulations, as well as our abilities for gaming. We are all products of a saved vs. damned culture built on a schizoid faultline. Our ancestors claimed piety and chosenness, as well as the right to operate a slave trade, install the institution of slavery, and commit genocide on the Indians. It's practically in our genes to tend toward extremism, toward absolutism; four hundred years of our existence tells us it's in our best interests to lie to ourselves. Now the poet down the block isn't just a Language poet or a New Formalist, he's a devil; our own position has to be defended in an extreme way. Obviously, this decreases chances for a reasoned criticism of his work. The poetry economy is almost entirely an artificial one; poetry generates almost no economic interest in the country outside the ten or twenty thousand people in the general poetic community. There's enough money in the system to attract gamers, but the money isn't generated by poetry itself: it's artificially pumped into the system via universities, arts foundations, gifts (the Lilly gift to Poetry is a recent notorious example), etc. This lends an aura of unreality to the poetry side of MFA World.

I kid the Language Poets on occasion (I know they can take it; they're good sports), but on one level theirs was an entreprenurial agenda meant to match well-educated middle- and upper-middle class white kids with academic jobs. They hooked up with some theorists--Marjorie Perloff among the most prominent--who were pushing their own theory-driven agendas in academia during the 80s and 90s; and the theorists helped the poets establish academic creds and an academic audience. More power to them; and this didn't prevent a number of really good writers to emerge from the Language chrysallis: I'm thinking of Lynn Hejinian, Bob Perelman, and Michael Davidson, in particular, as far as ones I myself admire. The problem with any powerful movement, though, is what is spawns. Like the ten percent of interesting theorists who spawned the ninety percent of forlorn academics wandering through their dark night of the soul, while they teach Derrida at Lake Oswego State at Onomatopoeia, the Language group spawned a middlebrow "movement" in our MFA programs. These students call themselves "experimental" writers--as if all language-use isn't experiment--and they seem to offer watered-down versions of Language poetry. A friend of mine calls it "language display" poetry; another calls a subset of it "the narcissism of filigree." They lack the rigor and vision of their predecessors, but have settled on their metier, I think, because it's perfect for gaming the current version of the system.

Now here's the wonderful irony: the "current version of the system" is, of course, ourselves. Our desire for the cushy has come full circle. I think we all assumed the best and the brightest would inherit our mantles. When one system battles another, real energy is unleashed: think of the late 50s, the Battle of the Anthologies, the Raw versus the Cooked. What we've got now is just one system; there is no rival system. The battle to supplant us is tepid, and from the inside: hothouse ideologues we've grown ourselves. From the Cooked to the Raw to the Half-Baked. Again, I aspire only to be the messenger here; I've opted out, which makes me a loser. I no longer teach writing classes. I don't want to know these people anymore; and from where I sit, they don't want to know me. But I could be completely wrong; maybe what I think I'm witnessing from outside is really a "movement," an effort to cleanse the system from the inside, a peristalsis. Now there's a thought.

September 08, 2009

I wanted to make some observations about why our criticism is so bitter and vindictive, instead of respectfully serious, even if sometimes harshly so; and offer some comments about teaching creative writing and the poetry these programs are producing nowadays. But there's so much to say along those lines (not to mention that so much has been said, and much better than I can offer), that I feel a need to respond to a few comments, from Laura and Mitch, and go from there.

Auden was famously kind and, as John Ashbery says, "notedly" ethical. But "negative" writing/ reviewing means different things to different folkses. The exact quote is "One cannot review a bad book without showing off." Not only does that speak to a personal evaluation writ large to include, perhaps less accurately, all others; but Auden also famously refused to select a winner for the Yale contest in 1955, and would have done so in 1956--with Anthony Hecht's full support--had he not been able to request O'Hara's and Ashbery's manuscripts from the reject pile (at Yale). So he was perfectly capable of the strongest "negative" criticism in fact, though he didn't see fit to write an essay addressing the flaws in the works of the 24 or so finalists (12 each year, presumably). He obviously saw a "system-wide" failure of some sort, but it didn't bother him; I wonder why not. Certainly, he had no obligation to (would Randall Jarrell have felt such an obligation?); but an awful outcome of this showed up in the TLS last year, in the form of a horrible homophobic letter from Jascha Kessler, one of the finalists in 1956, who had simmered bitterly over this rejection for more than fifty years! Maybe criticism (again, honestly and seriously rendered, no matter how harsh; that is, rooted in instances and examples one can point to, that gives a reader the possibility of making up his or her own mind) is a kind of (meta)fiscal accounting: pay as you go, critic/reader and poet both knowing what the p(l)aying field is.

This begs the question, are there any critics around like this, or is everyone a bitter partisan? Three terrific and measured critics come to mind immediately: James Longenbach, Mark Ford, and Angie Mlinko. But the kind of criticism -- or maybe I should say delivery system -- I'm talking about is personal and professional both: it can show up in print, but it functions on a day-to-day basis among our friends and students who are writers. To address each other in this way is, practically speaking, very possibly the only serious response the vast majority of writers out there is going to receive. Which makes it all the more important, and brings me to a consideration of the type of criticism one receives in a creative writing program. Laura makes the good point -- and DL implies this, too, in a recent statement about the new ascendancy of writing programs -- that there can't be anything wrong with the proliferation of these programs, as they foster good writing and sophisticated readers. The implication is that all programs broaden students, turn them into good citizens of the creative writing republic. Maybe that's so; but the institutionalization of writing has had some curious results, which I would like to explore, preferably after I read to my daughter so she goes to sleep.

September 04, 2009

While she and DL are traveling, Stacey has asked me to blog for a week; I jumped at the chance. The past month on BAP has been pretty fertile; I've particularly liked recent posts by T. R. Hummer, Katha Pollitt, and Elena Karina Byrne, along with DL's quote from W. S. DiPiero's notebooks, and his own teaser first paragraph from his intro to the new BAP anthology. The quality of the writing has been high, thus rather intimidating, but I'll plunge ahead bravely and add some thoughts in various posts about poetry criticism, teaching creative writing, and random thoughts about contemporary poetry/poems.

The thing that intrigues me about our poetry criticism is that we are so extreme, although when you think about it, why shouldn't our criticism reflect the cultural moment, one of the most divisive in our history? I've long thought that Calvinism's basic tenet, that we are either saved or damned, not only outfitted us to be perfect little individual engines of capitalism, but also gave us our deepest sense of identity. I'm no sociologist, but I'm guessing that most or all humans have a built-in sense that we're better than the guy or tribe down the block; still, they have things we like, so we trade with them, maybe we fall in love once in a while, or have festivals where we get drunk together. We never let go our suspicions of them, nor the feeling that in some essential way we're a little bit better than they are; but we get along, make deals, coexist. It's only in the three great monotheisms that the people down the block are traitors to the human, and absolute emanations of evil; and as Americans, our legacy is we're the most saved of all; chosen, in fact.

It seems as if we're forgetting how to coexist; I'm not taking a high road here: I'm as bruised and bitter as anyone else. But I was struck the responses to Shaindel Beers's poem posted here on 9/1, both in support of the poem and lambasting it.

First things first: we can all choose to like or dislike this or any poem; the crux is, what will be our standard of praise or blame? An email friend of mine--I won't reveal her name--wrote to me that the poem was "dull sentimental prose" and that the "two sane responses are shouted down in the town meeting." That's strong, of course, but it holds the seed of discourse; it brings up aspects of the poem that can be discussed: perhaps the imagery is trite or unclear; perhaps the rhythms are too prose-like for some sensibilities; perhaps the manipulations of sentimentality are present. What about the contributions of the "two sane voices"? They declare the poem "babble," "not sufficiently literate," "adolescent," "hackneyed and vapid," "trite." I think the difference here--the reason that these responses don't admit of discourse--is that they are of a convinced other side; there's no room for argument, discussion, here. Beers is obviously damned, without recourse, let alone discourse.

And that very well might be, but the jury is still out if this kind of sneering is all we have as a rebuttal witness. I think my comments here are mild, but real--that is, honestly offered; but someone reading this might demand that I take a stand on the poem. I find merit in the poem, but I question some things. For example, is the word "geniuses" in the first line ironic or not? Much depends on that. It might seem obvious that it is, but absolutely nothing in the poem indicates that the parents are even smart. They seem utterly devoid of self-awareness, generosity, or entry-level skills of parenting. Yet "smartness" seems a lynchpin of the poem; and the reverse--that's everybody here is stupid--doesn't carry the whole weight of the poem, either. The word "But" at the beginning of the eighth line seems to take at face value the praise they offered to each other in letters; and the penultimate line seems to want the reader to supply an image of Richard Burton drunkenly quoting Shakespeare as he hurls his imprecations at the Helen Mirren mother staggering through a Plath-litany of disgust as she's handcuffed off to jail. Too much of this poem has to be supplied by the reader; and if you invoke a meta-argument, and say it's a piece of damaged work emanating from a damaged consciousness, I just don't buy it. This leads me to feel that the last line is, in fact, sentimental and manipulative. On the other hand, I applaud Beers for trying to talk about important subject matter; and I suspect that that's the chord, or one of them, she touches in readers who are just as dogmatic as the naysayers in the comments column. So much of our poetry these days seems "faked"--in the sense that W. S. DiPiero means, or I assume he means--that readers are hungry for language that addresses their real lives.

June 16, 2009

In responding to the posting of a Donald Justice poem last week, I mentioned the story Charles Wright tells of a conference with DJ when Wright was a student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. During the conference Don swallowed a fly. Here's the whole tale, as CW tells it.<<As I say, this [Don's] concentration was much in evidence in his teaching as well [as his tennis]. I shall never forget my first conference with Don to go over my poems. It was, in fact, my first conference with anyone about my poems, and I was anxious, to say the least. The subject matter of our conversation--Don's conversation--escapes me now. Some ineptitude I was trying to suggest was a poem. Something, no doubt, about goddesses and the Aegean Sea. But Don, as was his manner, was taking it seriously, very seriously. Certainly more serious than I, having already seen in a couple of workshop sessions what the level of performance was, a level far above what I was doing. In any case, Don was patiently going over the poem. At the same time, a fly was going over it, too. And over us, circling our heads, circling the page, circling Don's face as he kept his concentration ardently on the poem and on what he was saying. I, of course, was mesmerized by the fly as it got closer and closer to Don's face, and, abruptly, as Don inhaled to say something, flew into his mouth. His mouth! Don gulped. Bye fly. He actually swallowed the damn thing, so intent was he on the poem at hand. "Did I swallow that fly?" he asked, astonished. I allowed as to how he had. "Jesus," he said. Amazing! Then he actually went back to the poem. From that moment, he had me in the palm of his hand.">>This comes from an essay, "Improvisations on Donald Justice," in a volume of Workshop reminiscences, A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, edited by Robert Dana (University of Iowa Press, 1999).

May 28, 2009

In the Times a few weeks back (April 25) an article by Edward Rothstein, "The Sorrow, the Pity, the Celebration: France Under the Nazis," reviewed an exhibition at the New York Public Library (the exhibition runs through July 25), "Between Collaboration and Resistance: French Literary Life Under Nazi Occupation," organized by Robert Paxton. It was originally shown in Caen, France, in 1980 "as a display of a growing archive of war material," presented by Olivier Corpet and Claire Paulhan, and has been "reshaped" by Paxton, "whose 1972 book, Vichy France, outlined how avidly collaborationist that regime really was."

The show sounds terrific, brimming with material, much or most of it unfamiliar. Rothstein says, "A sense of disorder is partly the welcome price of seeing so much." He tries to give some sense of the enormous amount of information in the exhibit, such as the fact that the avant-garde writer Jacques Audiberti, because of paper rationing that benefited collaborationist French writers, "wrote his novel, Monorail, on wallpaper supplied by his father, a builder." He also shows how muddled and/or self-serving the majority of French writers were in the face of German oppression. Some, like Sartre and Cocteau, "went along with the dominant power for the ride," whereas others, like Irene Nemirovsky (Suite Francaise), remained ignorant until it was too late. (Nemirovsky, a Jew, converted to Catholicism, or tried to, but was sold out by the French police.) All in all, a pretty sad tale of authorial cowardice -- no wonder we teach our students that the author does not exist anymore -- with few exceptions. Rothstein says, "... very few [writers]... like Andre Malraux joined the underground armed forces to fight the Germans."

Here is the last paragraph of Rothstein's article. "This is not ... a tale of heroism or far-ranging insight. Though Mr. Paxton shows that poets were, as a group, particularly resistant to thecollaborationist lure [italics mine], for the most part, the touted visionary powers of writers left all too much in the darkness."

So my question is, how come the poets were so much less willing to go down the road that led, eventually, to Derrida and Paul de Man, and beyond?

May 26, 2009

InCreduLit.com, a scholarly service I use frequently when teaching literature, has expanded its focus to include cable television (more on that later) and a 24/7 news bureau, through which it monitors other news-invention services such as itself. This item is just in--hot off the press, as it were; I send it along in the interests of full disclosure.

"The New York Fabricator, an imaginary tabloid that invents news it thinks people want to hear, has reported today that the State Department is about to deploy a new weapon in the war on terror: Mary Qaeda Counterterrorist Ensemble and Cosmetics, Inc. Soon a fleet of pink Cadillacs will descend on the Middle East as "Mary Qay" representatives target Muslim women with a unique product line that includes eyeliners, mascara, forehead exfoliators, and lively new burqa styles. Under its new Secretary, former senator Hillary Clinton, the Department seeks to implement its controversial "Lysistrata" policy, which encourages Muslim women to withhold sex from their terrorist husbands in an attempt to shorten jihad. By making the top halves of Muslim women's faces 'irresistible,' Mary Qay reps hope to entice Muslim men to 'lay their guns and their women down at the same time'--winning the coveted pink Cadillacs for the reps in the process. Republicans were quick to attack the new policy. Former Representative Tom DeLay, in an interview on Fox News, expressed contempt for the plan. 'Give me a break,' he sneered. 'A Cadillac's a powerful lot of car for a woman ...' And former Vice President Dick Cheney bitterly called the program a 'pathetic half-measure,' compared to the one he tried to implement in 2004, which involved turning the Mary Qay Cadillacs into powerful car bombs; this initiative was narrowly defeated after Democrats and others pointed out that the main victims of the blasts would be women and children. In a related pilot program, 'Mary Qay Without Borders,' Mary Qay doctors will offer prosthetic limbs to replace those lost after amputations due to adultery, while Mary Qay plastic surgeons will treat survivors of 'honor killing' attacks whose faces have been disfigured by acid."